n doctors. They took over
the Lycee Pasteur, an enormous school at Neuilly, that had just been
finished and never occupied, and converted it into what is a most
splendidly equipped hospital. In walking over the building you find it
hard to believe that it was intended for any other than its present use.
The operating rooms, kitchens, wards, rooms for operating by
Roentgen rays, and even a chapel have been installed.
The organization and system are of the highest order. Every one in it
is American. The doctors are the best in Paris. The nurses and
orderlies are both especially trained for the work and volunteers. The
spirit of helpfulness and unselfishness is everywhere apparent.
Certain members of the American colony, who never in their lives
thought of any one save themselves, and of how to escape boredom,
are toiling like chambermaids and hall porters, performing most
disagreeable tasks, not for a few hours a week, but unceasingly, day
after day. No task is too heavy for them or too squalid. They help all
alike--Germans, English, major-generals, and black Turcos.
There are three hundred patients. The staff of the hospital numbers
one hundred and fifty. It is composed of the best-known American
doctors in Paris and a few from New York. Among the volunteer
nurses and attendants are wives of bankers in Paris, American girls
who have married French titles, and girls who since the war came
have lost employment as teachers of languages, stenographers, and
governesses. The men are members of the Jockey Club, art
students, medical students, clerks, and boulevardiers. They are all
working together in most admirable harmony and under an
organization that in its efficiency far surpasses that of any other
hospital in Paris. Later it is going to split the American colony in twain.
If you did not work in the American ambulance you won't belong.
Attached to the hospital is a squadron of automobile ambulances, ten
of which were presented by the Ford Company and ten purchased.
Their chassis have been covered with khaki hoods and fitted to
carry two wounded men and attendants. On their runs they are
accompanied by automobiles with medical supplies, tires, and
gasolene. The ambulances scout at the rear of the battle line and
carry back those which the field-hospitals cannot handle.
One day I watched the orderlies who accompany these ambulances
handling about forty English wounded, transferring them from the
automobiles to the r
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